US newspaper boss urges his journalists to experiment with digital tools

The man to watch in US journalism at present is John Paton, chief executive of the Journal Register company, which publishes 19 daily newspapers among its 170 print titles. It also has 154 online sites.

In April, Paton instituted the Ben Franklin Project, an attempt to focus the company's papers on being "digital first, print last." The project recognises that readers can play an active role in the news process. But it does not mean getting rid of reporters or editors. It simply means involving the wider community through the use of free and open web tools.

Two Journal Register titles - in Ohio and Pennsylvania - were tasked with using online tools to involve the community in the process of news-gathering. And the initial results, as reported by Poynter Online on 20 May, were pretty impressive.

But, according to TechDirt, Paton is pushing the bar further. Picking up on Google's "20% time" concept, Paton is setting up something he calls "idealab", where 15 employees will be granted 10 hours a week away from their work in order to experiment with the latest web tools - including an iPhone, an iPad and a netbook - and then report back on how to apply them for the good of the business.

Paton also asked people to apply via comments on his blog or by email, eliciting lots of interesting ideas. Almost all of the 150-plus comments were lengthy, thoughtful and earnest. Examples can be found here on the Nieman Journalism Lab site.